Tantric Trolling, Tantric Fixing: Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse’s Posts on Clerical Sexual Abuse

Just over a year ago, eight long-term students of Sogyal Lakar (known as Sogyal Rinpoche) sent him a letter that is still shaking the foundations of his “Rigpa International” corporation. The letter from “The Eight” accused him of decades of physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse of students, a “lavish, gluttonous, and sybaritic lifestyle”, and degrading the image and meaning of global Buddhism. The accusations have not been denied. Lakar has retreated from public life, and RI says that it’s investigating. Whether this will result in transparency and restorative justice remains to be seen.

Khyentse Norbu (Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse) comes from a decorated family of Tibetan Buddhist teachers, and is said to be a “Rinpoche” — a reincarnated “precious one”, born to carry perfect and rare teachings forward from a primordial source. Norbu is known for engaging his cosmopolitan global audience with pugnacious erudition, pot-stirring books, and a flair for documentary filmmaking, in which he was reportedly tutored by Bernardo Bertolucci, who he met on the set of “Little Buddha”.

Norbu shares a global stage with Lakar as a popular teacher of Tibetan Tantric Buddhism (Vajrayana). Accordingly, his students asked him to comment on the accusations against Lakar. A month after the letter from “The Eight”, he obliged by posting a ten thousand-word essay that was shared over a thousand times on Facebook, and lauded by his students around the world as a nuanced defence of Vajrayana’s abiding magic and the unorthodox but salvific bonds it promotes between teachers and students.

“Defence” is perhaps not the right word, however. The essay spends none of its time on the accusations. Rather, it sermonizes on the glory of the Vajrayana process, and laments the poor education of those who claim to be hurt by it. The Eight, Norbu argues, must have known what they were in for as Vajrayana students. They should have had “superior faculties” that would have allowed them to transform the perception of Lakar’s abuse into a belief in his spiritual care. These faculties should have been further cemented by the students’ “samaya”, or psychospiritual commitment to Lakar. The essay reminds readers that for Lakar’s students to break samaya by not framing all of his actions as beneficial condemns them to aeons of literal hell.

In the Vajrayana world, worldly laws don’t apply. Lakar is not committing crimes in that world, according to the essay’s reasoning, but rather relieving his students of the social conditioning that deludes them into thinking that mundane concepts like “crime” ultimately exist. The essay also deploys a quasi-subaltern discourse to elevate this goal above any consideration of institutional abuse. The non-Tibetan consumers of Lakar’s content are hopelessly naive, the essay argues, and to investigate whether concepts like “samaya” contribute to grooming conditions for abuse is the folly of “a few liberal, puritanical, Abrahamic, or individualistic activists.”

Vajrayana devotees, the essay argues, enter into a dangerous contract. The report from The Eight, which the essay neither quotes nor links to in the Facebook post, confirms the danger. Speaking of Lakar, The Eight write:

“You have punched and kicked us, pulled hair, torn ears, as well as hit us and others with various objects such as your back-scratcher, wooden hangers, phones, cups, and any other objects that happened to be close at hand. We trusted for many years that this physical and emotional treatment of students – what you assert to be your “skillful means” of “wrathful compassion” in the tradition of “crazy wisdom”– was done with our best interest at heart in order to free us from our “habitual patterns”.

But if Lakar is guilty of anything, the essay suggests, it is in not giving his students the adequate training in understanding that punches and kicks from a Vajra master can lead to spiritual freedom.

At the same time, the essay criticizes Lakar’s supposed lack of traditional training. But even this reasoning turns back on The Eight, who should have been able to assess Lakar’s training before committing to him.

The essay’s content, which blurs the lines between victim-blaming, spiritualized sado-masochism, and promises of liberation, will be familiar to anyone who has studied modern global Vajrayana groups with a critical eye. If there’s anything novel about it, it’s in Norbu’s ability to pad in, Jordan Peterson-style, culture-war rhetoric that conflates critics with snowflakes:

If you are uncomfortable with the non-dual groundlessness of Buddhism—you might just as well follow one of the Abrahamic religions. These are the religions that follow a clearly grounded dualistic path and say things like “don’t eat pork, do eat fish, and women must wear burqas.” If the label ‘religion’ is altogether too embarrassing for your elitist so-called progressive minds, you might try some kind of quasi-atheistic secularism, coated with moralistic ethics and bloated with dogmatic liberal self-righteousness. Or you could blindly allow yourself to be swallowed up by existentialist angst, then get annoyed with those who get blissed out on hope.

Judging by the comments, many supporters appreciated the tough love.

But in October, Norbu escalated the anti-political-correctness rhetoric to outright mockery, dressed up in satire. In a post he has since tried to delete, he presented a sixteen-page spoof contract produced by “Bender and Boner Lawyers” designed to ensure regular-guy Rinpoches like himself “who desire to save all sentient beings yet also wish to have fulfilling sex lives”. In its joke-world, the contract would ensure that Rinpoches have the legal consent of students they want to have sex with. Justin Whittaker provides a good analysis here. (To see how the spoof taps into Jordan-Peterson-land, read what commenter “Daniel S. Thompson” has to say. According to him, criticism of Norbu’s satirical appeal to self-responsibility is coming from “Cultural Marxism”, which isn’t a thing.)

Lama Tsultrim Allione denounced the post.


Not funny — but certainly sophisticated. In the style of Middle-Way philosopher-rebels who historically have delighted in mocking all moral and existential positions as absurd, Norbu is plausibly making fun of multiple sentiments at the same time. He’s spoofing both predatorial American litigiousness and the damage-control industry. He’s self-deprecating in his suggestion that because he lacks omniscience and is remains a red-blooded male, he needs a contract like this for self-protection. He’s questioning the sanity of potential students, and the perceived prudery of spiritual aspirants by listing, exhaustively, the particular and explicit sex acts that the hypothetical Rinpoche needs his students to consent to.

The primary target of the contract, however, is the “snowflake” attitude that is deemed so uptight, legalistic, and politically correct that all of the spontaneity of both sexual ecstasy — and, by implication, spiritual realization — would be outlawed. Consent, the joke suggests, is a buzz-kill.

Here’s where things get deadly serious, perhaps revealing the implications of “samaya” to such an extent that even Norbu had to walk it back. The hidden punchline of the contract is the assertion that there can be no informed consent within a Vajrayana pedagogy. And if that’s true, there can be no protection whatsoever for people like The Eight, despite the fact that Norbu says they should have investigated and analyzed Lakar beforehand.

The joke illuminates a double-bind: you have to know beforehand what you cannot know.

For emphasis:

The Vajrayana student cannot know or consent to what they are getting into. The mundane egoic person who would ask for a legalistic contract to consent to a transformative process is the very person who would be destroyed by that process. They engage samaya because the teacher knows what they cannot know, what cannot be explained before it is realized. It can only be realized through the death of the mundane personality. Samaya marks that death. 

Last week, Norbu Facebooked this defence of global Vajrayana culture in general, and the version of it on offer through Shambhala International in particular. The post doesn’t mention current circumstances: that Shambhala’s leader, Ösel Mukpo, has been accused of forced confinement and sexual assault. Further, that accusations against Mukpo come within the context of revelations about intergenerational sexual abuse at SI, following in the legacy of its founder, Chogyam Trungpa, who openly slept with students and had seven wives when he died of terminal alcoholism n 1987, and appointed a successor who had unprotected sex with male students while knowingly carrying HIV.

This new post ignores all non-idealizing context with a rear-guard elevation of Trungpa and language that positions the current criticism of institutional abuse as a cultural attack that has forgotten the Tibetan genocide. The description of Trungpa is black and white, which goes to show that the language of the dangerous trickster needs only be used when acknowledging “perceptions” of harm:

Nothing Trungpa Rinpoche did was for entertainment or commercial purposes – giving in to popular demand by diluting and watering down the truth – but it was always to guide students on the authentic path to liberation.

This hymn to Trungpa ends by citing the fruits of his labour: the wisdom of Pema Chödrön, a spiritual “grand-daughter” of lamas gone by. It cites and links to an interview Chödrön gave to Tricycle in 1993. I’ve commented on this interview as a rationalization of the disorganized attachment typical of high-demand groups in this post.

Unfortunately, Norbu falsely gives the date of the interview as 2015. While it is still true that Chödrön has not issued any statement on the Mukpo crisis nor updated the sentiments expressed in the interview, the wrong date makes it look like this is closer to her present view than it might be, and worse — that she may have conducted the interview as a recent, pre-emptive strike against the coming scandal. In praising Chödrön this way, this post might be doing her a disservice. Further idealization of her 1993 statement will make it more difficult for a possible update to be made or broadcast.

To summarize: the August letter, October “joke”, and the recent Facebook post all suggest that Vajrayana teachers are not “safe” in any mundane sense. They can’t offer safe spaces or consensual contracts. On the other hand, those who nonetheless crave the danger of Vajrayana teachers are the most earnest and passionate of students.

These arguments advocate for the value of disorganized attachment to  a teacher as a means to spiritual liberation.

The student is asked to depend upon a person who will necessarily terrify them. They are told they are immature if they unwilling to do it. They are told they are ignorant if they feel they were hurt by it. They are told it is their fault if they don’t perceive their experiences as “pure”. They are told, told, told, told, told.

The good news is that these statements aren’t at all deceptive. Norbu is telling the world exactly what’s going on.

12 Comments

  • Thank you, Matthew. On this article you and I are on the same page. Those who’ve traveled to Bir in Indis will know that DKR and his friend Orgyen Tobgyal,live in a fantasy land separated from the lives of most other Tibetans, padded by their wealth. They are not well likesd by many in the settlement, “spiritual playboys” is one way I’ve heard them described, but of course their Western students have no way of knowing that. Be aware, also, that though they dress similarly to monks, they are not monks. The costumes seem part of the mystique.

    The film “Words of My Perfect Teacher” helped me decide not to attend teachings with DKR. The fawning naiveté of his students was off-putting and concerning. I thought “these people have made a decision to turn off their critical thinking.”

    If one wants to practice Tibetan Buddhism, just like Catholicism or Hinduism, one needs to do a deep study of the Tibetan culture. And one should also do a deep study of the fundamental Indian texts that form the basis of the Nalanda tradition.

    If one makes Tibetan friends, one will be privy to the information and opinions that Tibetans have had over both brilliant and errant gurus, informed by hundreds of years of cultural legacy.

    You will notice Tibetans tend not to frequent white Buddhist centres. These are ivory towers that sell a product sheilded from cultural knowledge and protections, and presented in a palatable way as a consumer product. But, to lamas such as DKR this brings.in the dough, is it any surprise he wants to protect the very comfy situation he has for himself?

    But please, let us not in the manner of white liberals tar all with the same brush. There are many safe, ethical Tibetans teaching. Their centres tend to be smaller and poorer. They tend not to have one teacher ruling the organization, and they spend more time in one place developing students than a jet set lifestyle of teaching tours.

    Sure , they may lack the excitement and charisma of DKR, but they have the time and interest to offer true guidance.

    As for DKR’s self-serving fundamentalist approach to samaya, please take a look at the Dalai Lama’s comments on the same:
    https://youtu.be/0wP4rsM7AZQ

    It seems the Buddhist world expects the DL to fix every problem in TB, not understanding he is one 83 year old man. He has made many statements that we need to implement.

    • Thanks. Great points to keep in mind. I saw the playboy/safe-ethical divide play out in the generational and transcultural difference between Roach’s ACI/Diamond Mtn orgs and his home temple of Rashi Gempel Ling in Howell, NJ. In Howell, old Khen Rinpoche served the immigrant Mongolian congregation faithfully and quietly for decades, and attracted about 2 dozen American enthusiasts over the years (certainly not from trying), from which lot Roach became the only charismatic evangelist. The Howell congregation really didn’t know what to do about him. My impression was that KR was flummoxed, and would have had to overcome centuries of etiquette — as well as to understand that he was being manipulated as a source of validation — to denounce Roach in any meaningful way.

  • Indeed the empowerments bypass Samaya or replace it with a clue like “your commitment is to say a mantra once a day” .. which is what Samaya is about, practice – self discipline. It has been subverted by ‘oh those Samaya rules we wouldn’t tell you, well you broke them and now you are done” kind of infantile backstab once you catch them breaking their own commitments to ethical conduct. Samaya is invented at the time it is needed to control the population, but when people are concerned it is redetermined as “just be a good person”, or “try to not forget the practice”. Actually Samaya is impossibly hard so that nobody can ever keep it so it is more of a kind of aspiration to be perfect so we always fall short. That means one has to perpetually do confession and develop a powerful inner critic that is another cult control accomplishment where the population control themselves and each other. They just need a gentle reminder to practice if something goes awry and they will figure out they are wrong even if they are right

  • DKR’s pushback is only sophisticated in the same way that Trump seems to run rings around everyone, despite being an oaf.

  • I’ve been asked to help and pass this on. Studied and Trained at Drepung Loseling in Atlanta, GA, USA with Geshe Lobsang Tenzin. Working to combat abuse and exploitation of Guru worship in Vajrayana.

    I wrote about sexual abuse in Shambhala International and have heard from other groups/ orders since then. If anyone wants to share a story about concerns of abuse within buddhist communities – email me [email protected]

    Dennis Allgary

    • Hi,
      Just a bit confused ..you are Dennis Allgary but the email is sarah.marsh ..are you one and the same ….thatnks for clarifying ?
      Angus

  • DKR likes being the James Dean of Tibetan Buddhism as it plays out in the west. Always has. He’s a complex guy: trickster and teacher, macho and mysterious, but now this latest, good grief.
    He can’t help but focus his erudite abilities on making this silk purse out of a pig’s ear; his life’s role (“Bad boy DKR”) depends upon it. In selling the stinking purse he uses the sales pitch “See the predator/abusive lama as always teaching —-or be damned to Hell”, The use of picking & choosing Vajrayana scripture/rules, etc, just like any preacher who literally interprets certain parts of the bible ,is DKR’s attempt to cover up the predators around him (and to protect his elevated position as guru).
    Man, I’m thankful I have a Tibetan teacher who, unconcerned for what other Vajrayana lamas & their students say about him, doesn’t sit on a throne, doesn’t want anyone prostrating (nor standing up when he enters or exits the room) and exudes wisdom and compassion.

    • Hi Austin ,
      Who is your teacher …I am a very dissillusioned ex Khyentse student …I found him to be highly abusive ….would be grateful to know of truly decent and well meaning Buddhist teachers .thanks .
      angus

  • Interesting points. Rather one-sided, though: critical discussions of the Vajrayana also need to be critical about being critical, and include the opposite side: the gems among Vajrayana teachers.

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